So I came up with an idea recently, wondering what if you could make a story about the rise of a bunch of ex-paladins back into true paladins.

And I was wondering, what if instead of just having a gestalt with one side being paladin, what if the PCs in such an adventure had classes as normal, but gained paladin powers in their treasure? Like, this treasure parcel contains so-and-so hundred GP, a few gems, a magic rapier, and oh look, one of you just got the cure-fatigue mercy and another got another use of Lay on Hands.

So, like, if you wanted to turn a class's abilities into treasure like this, being picked up per-encounter rather than per-level, how would you go about it? Create a list of random bonuses that you dice-roll for? Have an automatic bonus progression? Issue bonus spell slots at the start/end of each encounter that can be used to cast paladin-themed stuff?

(As a side note, there's a discussion about a monstrous races game going on in Game Planning at the moment. I wonder if it'd be possible to play a 'pure' monster in terms of taking monster hit dice and natural abilities, and instead of taking PC class levels, get those class features in this 'packed in with treasure' way.)

Look at class features at what level the paladin gain them, put them as treasure...and that's pretty much it.

There is an official rule to play monster in pathfinder, it's in the back of bestiary 1. It would mostly depend at what level the party get started at.

As for monster abilities as treasures...well this part will be up to you. I don't believe some abilities are appropriate for PCs at any levels...but well, play around and see what works and what doesn't.